Hard Days
by UndergroundSoul
Summary: Ninja fight all the time-that doesn't mean they don't have breaking points. Six drabblets about war, death and living.


**A.N: **A series of drabblets with prompts from my friend. These are all the ones that turned out angsty. Mostly Team 7 with some others. This is probably going to be full of situations that would never really happen in the Naruto world, but hey, it's fanfiction.

**Warnings: **Death, threesomes, het, yaoi, implied sex. Various pairings.

_Gears_

The three are not a team anymore like when they were young and independent and bright. They are not the children who fought and bickered and left. They are not so foolish anymore.

They are not two and a leftover, of any combination. Their lives are not open, with possibilities in every face. They guard each other fiercely and react jealously and yet know the others will never leave.

It's not singular—one and one and one, because when you're alone the world is much bigger and you are simply a speck with your own problems and _you_ need to find a way to solve them. They promised each other to never be alone again after they split, and for that they are weak for caring and strong for staying.

They are simply a whole made of three parts, vivid and beautiful and smooth, but take one away and the machine ceases to function.

_Sleep_

Two boys sleep in a bed and each night one is woken by the other. They have learned to operate on little sleep and are adept at hiding the dark circles under their eyes. The dark one puts on some eyeliner and passes it off as being slightly conceited. The bright one laughs off his tiredness and takes his friends to lunch.

Each night, one of them has nightmares. Dark and coiling, they wake up sweat-drenched, shivering, flushed, panting, suffocating, crying, screaming, silent, kicking, or frozen. The other rocks them, gives them a bath, makes some coffee, fucks them, anything they need in order to get back to sleep again. They both lie entangled and wake up the next morning and don't say anything.

One dreams of fire and a crushed village and a being with claws and fangs and fur, and he looks in a mirror and sees a fox staring back at him. One dreams of blood and red eyes and a man once _brother_ but now more _betrayer_ than anything and he looks into those eyes and sees himself.

They are both damaged. While the cracks cannot vanish, the glue will hold for another day.

_Strength_

When they were fighting, it was usually Naruto and Sasuke who did the hand-to-hand combat, partially because they enjoyed getting the stress of the day out by beating each other up, and partially because they were afraid of hurting Sakura. It's not that she couldn't defend herself, just that with two boys and a man in her group they all looked after her and made sure she didn't get too many serious injuries. Maybe it was primal instinct to keep the female safe, maybe they were just worried. Either way, Sakura never joined the mock fights.

Which was why they were surprised when one afternoon after Sasuke "stopped being an ass and lightened up" she asked to spar with the two.

"Um...Sakura-chan, are you sure that's the best idea?" Naruto asked, scratching his head nervously. "We get pretty rough out here."

"Oh, I'm sure." Sakura replied and cracked her knuckles while Kakashi chuckled and leaned back against the tree trunk to watch.

Twenty minutes later both Sasuke and Naruto were lying in a heap while Sakura looked over their wounds and grinned. That had felt _good._

"Sakura, you didn't have to throw that kunai _that_ hard, did you?" Sasuke grumbled, rubbing the spot on his head where the iron loop had hit him. "It fucking hurt."

"Where'd you learn all that?" Naruto threw a wary look at her. "You never fought with us like that."

Sakura straightened up and stopped smiling. "Let me put it this way. If you two ever leave me again, I will beat _both_ your asses again and drag you two back here, then lock you in a basement until you decide to stay. And then I'll beat you up again for taking so long to reach that decision." And Sakura grabbed one of her kunai from where it had landed in the dirt and walked off to the showers. "And it will _hurt._"

"Well," Kakashi laughed from his tree. "Looks like you two are leashed and whipped. Now all you have to do is get married."

_Peace_

Kakashi remembers a time when he was young and foolish and had two grey eyes instead of one red. He watched the years flip by, _fifteen, eighteen, twenty, twenty-four, twenty-seven, thirty-one, _like pages in one of Jiraiya-sama's books, and watched his students grow up. Sasuke is still as proud and hides his feelings as well as ever, Naruto hasn't lost any of his boisterousness and easy-going charm, and Sakura has finally grown and is beautiful with knowledge.

Kakashi thinks they shouldn't be so motionless; it isn't right.

The clearing has been ripped apart—kunai and giant shuriken everywhere, singed plants, damp muddy ground, a fissure ten feet wide and twice as long, a crater near the edge and a few ripped up tree stumps next to it. On one side are his three students, so still, so still. Sasuke's arm is curled around Naruto's shoulders and he is facing Sakura, whose hand is reaching over to grasp Sasuke's. They don't look peaceful. Sakura's forehead is wrinkled in concentration, Naruto has the edge of a snarl at his mouth and Sasuke looks as indifferent as he had in life. But the body language says enough so that the med team waits a while, waiting for Kakashi to stop staring.

He turns away from them, pushes up his hitai-ate and focuses his Sharingan on the picture: a blackened leaf on Naruto's chest, the mud in Sakura's bright hair, the scratches running down Sasuke's leg. He lodges it into his memory firmly and just for remembering, steps closer so he can see the smudges and blood on them. Then he covers his face turns and walk away, signaling that the med team can start.

After that he has two memorials to visit every week. One of a large tombstone with his almost-friend's name on it and the other a statue of a spiral, a fan and a cherry blossom intertwined together at the center of the cemetery. He is later than ever.

_Whip_

"How could you?" Ino's voice cracked in the middle of the sentence. "You...you worthless _shinobi_, you couldn't keep her out of the way? You knew," She stepped forward and nobody made a move to hold her back. "You knew that she wouldn't be able to fight, but you let her go into a situation like that? WERE YOU STUPID?" No one replies.

"Eight Sound-nin. Eight. _Eight_ and you just left her there with them! All your fucking bravery went out the window and you _didn't even realize she was left behind?" _Ino shakes her hair and her words strike all three of them. "_WHERE WERE YOU?"_

And none of the men of Team 7 can respond.

_War_

Sasuke isn't aware that he has nightmares. They come randomly through the days, but always at the same times. At exactly eleven o'clock, granted he's not awake or fighting, the first images of Itachi and bodies creep into his sleep. His Sharingan spin under his eyelids in a gross imitation of rapid-eye movement during normal dreaming. By twelve o'clock he's thrashing and soon after that he'll begin softly screaming. In life he can control himself, but Sasuke cannot keep hold of himself in his own mind, and so there is nothing to make sure he will stop.

One claw runs down his cheek and Sasuke tenses, but the tipped fingernails run through his hair and he stops. The nails come back and Sasuke curls up on himself, slowly relaxing over the course of an hour. The claws run through his hair continuously until Sasuke slumps back into deeper sleep. They run over his face almost reverently before slipping away, and by the time Sasuke awakes the next morning he doesn't remember anything about the night before.

Sakura often stays awake squinting over medical notes from the hospital. She works ninety-hour weeks, not counting on the battlefield and the extensive surgery with her arms up to the elbows in blood; she flops down in the break tent and doesn't wake until another emergency. When she gets home she usually falls into bed again and then makes tea when she wakes up. Her dreams are either silent and blank or usually contain anything from Sasuke turning traitor again to Naruto going Kyuubi-berserk and killing them all. Then she feels guilty and avoids eye contact and gets distracted and very nearly gets killed, which gives everyone else heart attacks.

She doesn't wake up when a pair of arms encircle her and clutch her tight, when a pair of lips kiss the nape of her neck and nuzzle her ear. Fangs nibble at her earlobe softly and she sighs and turns towards the mouth. But the arms immobilize her and keep her in place until she settles down and stops scrunching her eyes up; the arms come away nearly an hour later and disappear. Sakura wakes up feeling more calm than she usually does, and saves three more lives than the day before.

Kyuubi still doesn't like it.

His pack, his teammates, shouldn't be this weak. Naruto disagrees; they're strong enough for going through this, for fighting when they should be at peace. Kyuubi snaps back that they'll be at peace when their ashes are buried in an urn eight feet underground, is that what he wants? Naruto goes silent and Kyuubi resumes his work.


End file.
